Archive

The $9 billion a year video-game industry in America, which contributed mightily to the carnage at Littleton, Paducah, and Jonesboro, is far more than the mere commercial exploitation of techniques and technologies developed as “legitimate” training instruments for the military and law enforcement agencies. To understand the roots of this new form of “Manchurian Candidate” programmed terrorism, it is necessary to go back to World War II and the immediate postwar period, when there was a concerted effort launched, by the Frankfurt School and the London Tavistock Institute, to use the Marxist/Freudian perversion of psychology and other social sciences, as instruments for mass social control and brainwashing. The two pillars of the assault on the American intellectual tradition were cybernetics and the drug counterculture.

At that time, a number of prominent social scientists openly spelled out their goal, of using the wartime-tested techniques of mass psychological manipulation, to pervert and control the American people. And in most instances, their emphasis was on children, and the need to destroy the fabric of family life.

Lord Bertrand Russell, who joined with the Frankfurt School in this effort at mass social engineering, spilled the beans, in his 1951 book, The Impact of Science on Society. He wrote:

“Physiology and psychology afford fields for scientific technique which still await development. Two great men, Pavlov and Freud, have laid the foundation. I do not accept the view that they are in any essential conflict, but what structure will be built on their foundations is still in doubt. I think the subject which will be of most importance politically is mass psychology…. Its importance has been enormously increased by the growth of modern methods of propaganda. Of these the most influential is what is called “education.” Religion plays a part, though a diminishing one; the press, the cinema, and the radio play an increasing part…. It may be hoped that in time anybody will be able to persuade anybody of anything if he can catch the patient young and is provided by the State with money and equipment.”

Russell continued, “The subject will make great strides when it is taken up by scientists under a scientific dictatorship….The social psychologists of the future will have a number of classes of school children on whom they will try different methods of producing an unshakable conviction that snow is black. Various results will soon be arrived at. First, that the influence of home is obstructive. Second, that not much can be done unless indoctrination begins before the age of ten. Third, that verses set to music and repeatedly intoned are very effective. Fourth, that the opinion that snow is white must be held to show a morbid taste for eccentricity. But I anticipate. It is for future scientists to make these maxims precise and discover exactly how much it costs per head to make children believe that snow is black, and how much less it would cost to make them believe it is dark gray.”

Russell concluded with a warning: “Although this science will be diligently studied, it will be rigidly confined to the governing class. The populace will not be allowed to know how its convictions were generated. When the technique has been perfected, every government that has been in charge of education for a generation will be able to control its subjects securely without the need of armies or policemen.”

Russell and the “Lethal Chamber”

Russell had been working on the concept of the scientific dictatorship for decades. In his 1931 book, The Scientific Outlook, he had devoted a chapter to “Education in a Scientific Society.” Here, he was equally blunt about his oligarchical totalitarian vision. Drawing the parallel to the two levels of education provided by the Jesuits, Russell asserted: “In like manner, the scientific rulers will provide one kind of education for ordinary men and women, and another for those who are to become holders of scientific power. Ordinary men and women will be expected to be docile, industrious, punctual, thoughtless, and contented. Of these qualities probably contentment will be considered the most important. In order to produce it, all the researches of psycho-analysis, behaviourism, and biochemistry will be brought into play…. All the boys and girls will learn from an early age to be what is called `co-operative,’ i.e., to do exactly what everybody is doing. Initiative will be discouraged in these children, and insubordination, without being punished, will be scientifically trained out of them.”

For the children chosen to be among the scientific ruling class, education was to be quite different. “Except for the one matter of loyalty to the world State and to their own order,” Russell explained, “members of the governing class will be encouraged to be adventurous and full of initiative. It will be recognized that it is their business to improve scientific technique, and to keep the manual workers contented by means of continual new amusements.”